


A Queen Without A Crown

by Uniasus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, power dymanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 09:23:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1144298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft can feel a promotion on the wind, one that comes with a single staff member.  They must be perfect, but he doesn't expect her</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Queen Without A Crown

She doesn't like school, it's boring, too easy and her parents quote social reasons to keep her from skipping a level. So she reads the textbook at home, or out in the park, or on one of those white stools in the Apple Store and when the exams come around her photographic memory makes sure she gets top marks. There is no reason to listen to boring lectures, to smile at Susie who is supposed to be her chemistry partner, to glance Rodger as he struts around school in his football uniform. There is no reason to go.

So she doesn't.

Which is why when she returns from the electronics shop that she's a pseudo apprentice at there is a copper at her apartment door. She had not been at school, so someone, some rookie judging by the fidgeting, had been sent to her home instead. 

She can tell that there is something wrong, it's in the rookie's eyes. She's so new to the uniform she stumbles over her words and all that comes out is she needs to come with the rookie and she just knows that something has happened to her silly parents. 

They're dead. 

She was brought in to identify them.

Restaurant robbery gone wrong. They had met up for lunch, never expecting a violent, withdrawal shaking meth addict to barge into the restaurant screaming for money. Something, maybe a hallucination, had caused him to start shooting. Her parents were two of three dead, three others being wounded. 

She always thought she was above the world, or at the very least above her peers. She never understood the crying girls in the movies, the screaming and hysterics. But she never had the right trigger before and as she looks at their bodies lying next to each other on metal tables and hears their voices in her head (can't you at least try to go to school, even if you sleep in the last row?) understanding and exasperated and gone, gone, gone she starts crying and there's nothing the medical examiner can do to get her to leave before her eyes are dry. 

The world around is no longer boring, it's painful and torturous and she changes her mind about her future. She's not going to be a hacker, living amongst information and setting it free. She's going to join the Yard, nay MI5, and take down the networks (for she knows it is the system and not the shooter responsible) that made this possible. 

~*~

He has been rising through the ranks of the government even before he was officially on the staff. At Eton, he had made acquaintances with those years ahead of him, proved himself to be a useful fellow, and when they graduated they approached him with questions and requests for help and advice before he had finished school. Mummy had been proud. Sherlock just thought him a prat. 

But then again, at that time his younger brother had moved beyond the imitation phrase and instead sought to be his anti-thesis. 

He could feel it in the air, a promotion. Again. And while he knows some sneered at him behind his back - how dare someone so young move so quickly? - no one ever said he was a bad choice for each of his pay-scale improvements. He was good at his job, and everyone else knew it. 

This time, he knows, would be special because the rank involved the right to an assistant. Someone to do the legwork, to act as a door keeper. But he refuses to accept someone already employed at Whitehall. 

He has time, his informants and deductions allow him to see the future of a sort and thus that this promotion is maybe a year off. That means he has a year to find the perfect assistant, someone to work as secretary, detective, errand runner. Someone loyal, efficient, and secretive. Some who wouldn't mind getting involved with trouble because having eyes on Sherlock was enough, he didn't want to think about possible concerns with staff personal issues. 

The answer comes from Nicolas McArthur. His brother, Jonathan, had been in his year at Eton and during a visit and conversing with both McArthurs he hears about someone who catches his ear. 

Nicolas works for the Yard, and it is obvious that eventually he would be running it. He is sharing stories with his guest and Jonathan, the most recent about a young girl's reaction to her parents deaths. 

“Sanderson tried to get her to leave, and she just turned around and stared at him. Tears running down her face, nose running, just stared at him and he starts stammering apologizes, and backs away, leaving her alone in the morgue and refused to enter, or let anyone else for that matter, until she's done crying. And when she comes out an hour later, her eyes are dry, face blank, and despite wearing ratty trainers you would have sworn she was wearing thick heeled boots. Reminded me of you, Mycroft.”

Not that he cries, not since that first time, when he cut his finger off and his father smacked him for the tears. He twists his ring, minding the scar tissue underneath. But he does have a way of making people do what he wants with just a look, has the ability make an exit (or entrance) and he certainly know how to put aside grief (and other emotions).

He decides to pay this girl a visit. 

~*~  
There is a man in her living room, sitting in her father's chair, and drinking tea from her mother's flowered china. She feels the urge to slap him, but she suspects this is the social worker whose visit she had been expecting (but not in her own home) and violence towards such a person would not be wise for the sake of her future.

She stares at him instead, and while he does not return her gaze it's obvious he knows she is there. The door does not open silently. 

She does not speak, nor does he, until the tea is done and once the cup and saucer touch the table she's whipping it away from him and cupping it to her chest.

He frowns at her. “I see you're not completely over your sentiment.”

She growls at him. “It's called being human and grieving.”

He brushes the comment off, and that is the second clue that he's not the social worker she had been expecting. They would understand grieving and try to calm her down. 

“You are in need of a guardian. I'm offering my services.”

Of course she needs a guardian, a sixteen year old girl (almost seventeen, birthday next week and there won't be a cake or candles, no family getaway in the country) cannot live by herself. But she expects to be sent to her Aunt Judy. The only living relative that she is aware of. 

“I don't need to go into foster care. I have relatives.”

He hmms. “You don't actually. You see, your dear Aunt Judy passed away seven months ago now. Heart attack.” He watches her face. 

She blinks at the news, but she can't make herself feel grief for her aunt, not like for her parents. Aunt Judy had been a figure in her childhood, she hadn't actually seen her since she was eleven. 

“Do you accept my offer to be your guardian?”

“I don't know who the fuck you are!”

“Oh, I had thought you would be smarter than this.” With a sigh, he gestures to the loveseat opposite him, where she used to cuddle with her mom, and instead she sits down on the floor right where she is. The obvious discomfort to his ease at look at her makes her grin inside. 

“I am here to offer you a job in the future. I work in the government and find myself needing an assistant soon. I will allow you to continue to live here, pay for your needs, and see you get the necessary training. I believe you can accomplish that while still managing to pass your A-levels. You will just be going to Whitehall instead of that electronics shop on Regents street when you should be in school. And then, once you graduate, you will join me in the government.”

“Do you work for MI5?”

“No. I'm just a minor official in the government.”

“Than I say no.”

“Do you realize how rare an opportunity like this is?”

“Frankly, I don't think it's an opportunity at all. You've provided no evidence of who you are, that you can make that happen, and what exactly do you mean by assistant? Whore?”

He frowns. “I mean assistant. Someone to help with the paperwork, to gather information, and deliver instructions that may need to be sent so as not to leave a paper trail. I have no desire to engage in anything physical with you, in fact I find the idea repulsive.”

She feels strangely upset by that last comment. He's not bad looking, and it twinges a bit to be called repulsive. 

“I already have plans.”

“Yes, joining MI5 was it?”

She nods and he just looks at her. She feels like he's peeling her clothes off, and then her hair and skin to look right at her brain and heart. He reading her, and he sees something that he likes. He doesn't smile, but the atmosphere in the room changes to something a little less hostile and she thinks maybe he is sincere. 

“At the moment, you are already listed as my foster daughter. Come next Monday, you will accompany me to work, see what I do, and then make your decision about my offer.”

He stands up, lifting his knees to step over her crossed legs, and once he is past her turns back around to lean over her shoulder. He places a crisp, white business card on the tea saucer.

“I'll see you Monday.” 

She doesn't answer, but as soon as he's out the door and on the steps to outside she's racing to close it and lock it shut. She watches through the peephole as he steps outside and then rushes to the window to see him flag down a cab. Only then does she return to her mother's tea set and the business card. 

Mycroft Holmes it reads, the M and H large and loopy while the rest of the name stands out in crisp serif font. There's the governmental crest under his name, and along the bottom aligned to the right is a phone number. It doesn't mention his position, and that piques her interest. This Mycroft Holmes might not get her what she wants, but he's intriguing anyway.

~*~

When he comes to pick her up he is struck by the change. When he had seen her last week, she had been dressed in hand-me downs and second hand store clothing, jeans and a t-shirt and with her hair loose and uncombed. Now though, she was nervously playing with her hands while they sat inside the cab dressed in what had to be one of her dead mother's business outfits. 

A mother who had obviously been larger and shorter than her daughter. He could see the almost hidden safety pins keeping the shirt from falling off her shoulder, anchored in her bra strap, and the modest skirt was too short for her. 

The ride is silent, only broken as the car pulled up to Whitehall. “Now, if people ask what you are here for, just say you are here to job shadow me for a school project.”

“Do they not realize you're my 'foster father'?”

He doesn't bother answering. 

They walk into the building in silence, he answers the necessary questions to get his guest a visitor's badge, and when they pass the conference room grabs a spare chair. He places it in a corner of his office, behind his desk so she could get a good look at what he was doing, instructs her to sit in it, and then begins to work.

He expects her to ask questions, not sit there silently. Sometimes she would write on a pad of paper, otherwise she would play with her phone. But despite her not paying obvious attention to what he is doing, she is very aware. It is astonishing to learn that just by watching and listening to him at the keyboard, she manages to know what he had typed. Every e-mail, every Google search, it is right there as a self-sent text message or on that pad of paper. She even has all his passwords. 

What an extraordinary child. 

She has no people skills. Well, no, Sherlock is worse, but she didn't interact with others easily and it was easy to tell she felt a little out of her depth here at the beginning. Where did she fit in this new environment? But by lunch, based on what she had gleaned from his work at the computer, she places herself in a slot in the order of those around her and it is in the top half. 

~*~

Bloody Mycroft worked for MI6! After watching what Mycroft does, he has to be working for the Secret Intelligence Service. Not James Bond and doing missing abroad, something more secret and more subtle. He deals with whispers, both hearing and saying. 

She goes to the public library and hacks into his computer. Hides her IP address and routes her signal through other computers all located in Russia and Asia. Uses all his passwords. She wants to see if what she had seen yesterday was typical or scripted to impress her.

If anything, he had hidden the juicy parts. (Probably to do with her lack of clearance)

She had witnessed exchanges with contacts in foreign companies, read articles on political and economical situations of other countries. Mycroft is a fact finder, and from his desk he learns information that could make and break people, make and break countries. He forwards it all, of course, to his superior. But he had mentioned a promotion in the wings and she finds a file, several files actually, of potential ways to shape the future of England, her allies, and her enemies. 

But really, he is getting all his information second hand. Who knows if his contacts were lying? If they even have the whole truth?

He is quite involved in current election in Poland for some reason, but that is okay. She was never good seeing the use of information, but she is excellent at getting it. She hacks into the cameras of the campaign headquarters for several competitors and writes a program to stream them, sound and video, to Mycroft's computer so they would be the first things he sees when he logs in the next day.

It is fun, she could enjoy working for Mycroft Holmes, but she isn't sure she wants to. She wants to take down the drug networks in London, and then follow their death screams to the corners of the UK and into the Continent. Mycroft's work doesn't interest her. Except for the process, she could adapt and use that.

She doesn't go to school the next day, she doesn't go to Whitehall. She goes back to the electronics shop and continued her education there. Thomas is a genius at creating viruses.

~*~

When he sits at his desk Wednesday morning he is treated to the views of Poland. He was aware of how useful CCTV was, but had never actually watched events as they happened, simply requested footage from a certain place at a certain time. To be able to have access to cameras abroad, in a live stream, is exciting and useful. 

It did not take long to decide who is responsible. She had stolen all his passwords two days ago, but he did not realize she had such a talent for all things technical. Hacking into foreign computers, without being noticed, and sending the images of rooms hundreds of kilometers away to his desk. 

There were other things she could have done. He hadn't expected her talents with code to be this good, nor for her to understand what someone typed without looking at the monitor. Giving him access to these screens was a benevolent act when she could have performed so many malignant ones. In fact, it was in her ability to change government records, changing her age or leading social services to believe she is in the hands of a capable guardian, and then living the life she wants in peace. 

She could probably take money from any number of banks and live comfortably wherever she wished. 

It suddenly struck him that he needs her more than she needs him. 

No use telling her that. 

Remembering her outdated phone, he orders her a new one and orders same day delivery. He includes a note: I take it you accept my proposal.

~*~

It was a very nice phone. Shiny and already on an unlimited plan. There is already one number programmed into it – Mycroft Holmes's. 

She responds with a text. Wrong.

Throughout out the day, she imagines the look on his face at her refusal and smiles.

~*~

Mycroft is not used to being told his is wrong. He is not used to being challenged. But, he decides, he likes it. This girl is a challenge and one he has no desire to lose. She will work for him, and she will do it willingly.

The key is finding out what she wants from life and showing how their desires align.

He already knows she wants to work for MI5, a thought that makes him laugh because Mycroft already knows some of the work he does is too classified for secret service. But surely, she had learned that too and so it is something else that made her refuse him.

Mycroft acquires every file he can about her: medical, criminal, education. She was born on October 2nd, a week early, and had a severe case of bronchitis at age ten. She had been tried twice for fraud, hacking into personal account and stealing credit cards number, but nothing since she was fourteen. Her attendance at school is atrocious, but Mycroft had known that. Despite that, she still got a perfect score on every assignment, every test. 

What he had been hoping for was some indication of her career goals. There aren't any. There aren't even career assessment tests, though Mycroft is not upset at their absence. He already knows what she's good at and that she would be an invaluable asset to him.

He doesn't like confrontations. It's why he ignores Sherlock if possible and took a desk job. It's why he's looking forward to having an assistant, so she could do the face time instead of him if it was required. If she ever got her face out of her phone. And if her talent with technology even required that. She could probably limit how often he needed to interact with others. 

That promotion however is a year away still, and so going head to head with a problem person in not only common but also something he has to do personally. It's time to pay his foster daughter another visit. 

~*~ 

She spends the day with Thomas, working on a worm and fixing speakers on cell phones. School used to be boring, so she had taken to going to the electronics shop because that had been interesting. But now, now the shop was boring too. Because she had hacked into cameras countries away and streamed them live to Whitehall. Because what Mycroft does was interesting and challenging and her daily hacks into his system to see what he is doing fills her head with ideas of how it could be done better. 

Mycroft makes life interesting.

That doesn't mean she approves of him drinking tea from her mother's china. Again.

“I told you no.”

He, to her aggravation, doesn't answer. She wants to rip the china from his hands, but doesn't want to risk it. Looking like a petulant child and not caring, she sits down on the love seat across from him. 

Mycroft looks different. Something about his suit, his presence, made her not think of offices in Whitehall and men saying they were minor official but really not. No, she is thinking of royalty, of kingmakers, of people who radiated so much power that normal can't sense it. But she can. And she knows Mycroft is not going to let her go.

“I don't know what your goals are, but right now I want you to think of me as Zeus. I am the god of gods, and I will do anything you want if you come work for me.”

Ah, she is powerful and he knows it. She can not be forced. She will not go anywhere she does not to. (And she's wondering if she does want to join him). The fact that he wants her, and has admitted it to her, makes her know she is more powerful then him, even if he has labeled himself as Zeus. But it does mean if she asked for property rights for the moon, she will most likely get them. 

Knowing that, knowing she's wanted, makes her realize she wants to work with him.

It's a good thing her desires are closer to earth. 

“Meth. I want it gone from London. I want the suppliers found and their labs destroyed. I understand that may take some time, so within the next six months I want a new law making dealing and creating meth a larger offense.”

He looks quite capable of throwing lightening bolt. “That, my dear Hera, is already a personal project of mine.”

She smiles at him, just a little because she doesn't want him to know just how much that comment pleases him. Or the fact that he called her Hera. 

She likes the idea of a second name, especially for the type of life she will soon have. But Hera was Zeus's wife, and Mycroft will never claim her that. He came to her, she is needed more, and in their little world that makes her more powerful. She can't be a god of gods, she doesn't like the spotlight because she works best behind a screen. Anonymous and deadly. 

She will play the supporting role, the important role, and to help with that she has to be anything but. She cannot be the girl who hacks by ear or knows several languages, she needs to be the clueless technology obsessed little flower. The prim and proper lady whose blossoms are a distraction. 

“Anthea. Call me Anthea.”

**Author's Note:**

> There may or may not be a sequel.
> 
> While I have seen fics linking Anthea to Athena (most notably [Grey Eyed Lady by coinin](http://archiveofourown.org/works/261762)), and love that idea, my knowledge of things Greek doesn't quite allow that. Anthea was linked to Hera, likening the goddess to flowers. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr - uniasus.tumblr.com for all things fanish.


End file.
